You probably have seen this already, but just in case, here is a good article on the benefits of salt reduction

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061101151027.htm

Slow Food Fast: Thanks for the comment and the article link! A couple of years old but it only gets truer with time. I particularly like the way the study authors, from Finland (where the government’s been fighting heart disease aggressively and successfully as a national emergency for 20 years–I think Benecol comes out of their efforts), bluntly take the U.S. Salt Institute’s own consumption figures to point out that not only is reducing dietary sodium not dangerous, as the organization tries to claim (see the Salt Institute’s president’s comments and my reply in this post from June 18th, but the fact is that U.S. salt intake has risen by 50 percent in the past 25 years–just about the same time we started seeing a jump in overweight and obesity. Coincidence? Doubtful. American researchers are just coming to the conclusion that it takes a significant cut in sodium, not 10 percent but 30 or so percent, to get us back down to something reasonable.

For health, and for environment, I’d definitely go for the organic and vegie.

Slow Food Fast: Thank you! I’ve gotten to the point where I agree with Hank Cardello (see the Stuffed book review) about the Food Pyramid fiasco–I’m ready to bring back the old-fashioned Four Food Groups (meats/proteins, dairy, vegetables and fruits, and grains). The main difference today would be the proportions–more vegetables and fruits, smaller portions of proteins (with more beans replacing some of the animal proteins) and grains, and keep the dairy low-fat. Actually, that’s how most people used to eat at home before fast food became such a daily thing.

I kind of wonder if a lot of vegetarians are going for the boxed stuff more than they acknowledge to themselves. I hadn’t considered glam packaging for bulk foods–it’s got possibilities, but I think it sort of defeats the purpose: bulk foods shouldn’t have packaging at all, should they? Is that why they’re less attractive in practice than the little boxes with the exotic brand names? Are we kidding ourselves about what we really want from our markets?

You might also like Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, and she has a newer book about how to shop for food around the edges of the store for the fresh foods, and avoid all the processed stuff in the middle aisles. Think that may apply to Whole Foods as much as to any standard supermarket.

http://www.vegetarianperspective.wordpress.com

It is the proponents of “moderate” low-salt diets who are misleading the discussion by claiming that a 60% reduction in salt is “moderate.” A 60% reduction is not only not “moderate” — it is unsustainable in free-living subjects.

[Response from SlowFoodFast]
Two or three points, or maybe five:

1. I’m amazed that the president of the Salt Institute should take so much time to respond personally to an individual blogger. And so quickly! Good aggregator software.
2. I’m quite relieved to hear the Salt Institute doesn’t demonize salt moderation. In 2003 Richard Hanneman joined William Kovacs, VP of the US Chamber of Commerce, to coauthor a legal petition to the director of the NHLBI, invoking the Data Quality Act and a mishmash of Treasury and OMB regulations, in hopes that NHLBI could be compelled to withdraw its public health recommendations on dietary sodium from its web site and all its public outreach materials. Hanneman and Kovacs claimed that public health recommendations to lower dietary salt posed a dire threat to the processed food industry and the salt industry and thus the national economy. The Department of Health and Human Services has retained this and the followup correspondence for your enjoyment. I know I’m repeating myself here, but Food, Inc., anyone?
3. The editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Hypertension is the aforementioned M.H. Alderman, who took over as editor-in-chief in 2007 from John H. Laragh, the founding editor and, incidentally, another named advisor to the Salt Institute. I’m not knocking their academic credentials, I’m just not adequately convinced of their objectivity.
   Alderman’s review articles often propose a higher risk of death with very low salt consumption. But he pushes this rare scenario over the overwhelming recent pattern of increasing average weight and blood pressure, more frequent kidney disease, and more Type II diabetes at younger ages than 20 years ago. On top of all that, Americans today eat an average of 3500 mg/day of sodium. Getting too LITTLE salt is really not the pressing health problem.
4. Sixty percent reduction of what, is the question. If your starting point is 3500 mg/day, getting down to 2500 mg/day is only a 30% reduction. Getting down to 1500 mg/day from 3500, recommended if your blood pressure’s above normal, is a 57% reduction, but it’s still quite doable, edible, and inexpensive. If you do it in stages, it gets easier as you go. You don’t need a special prepackaged low-salt diet or a personal nutrition advisor. There are whole guidebooks available–some of them for free, with sample menus and shopping tips and everything.
5. Anyone who takes their health advice from a food industry trade association and expects that association to put the public health ahead of its members’ profit hasn’t got all the sense the law allows.
—DebbieN